Famous 5 Adventure Games Review (attempted)

 

A short while ago, I took a look at The Famous Five and You -- a not very good series of adventure gamebooks from the 1980s based on Blyton's books which I'd mentioned before, but wanted to go into more depth on. But would you believe Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timmy spawned a second series of also not very good adventure gamebooks, published around the same time? (I hope so, it's not exactly a very difficult thing to believe.) I've also mentioned these before and, well, we may as well try and look at them in more detail, in spite of the obstacle we'll run into almost immediately.

The Famous Five and You

I wanted to do a proper review of these because I've mentioned them as a shining example of "not very good adventure gamebook based on a licensed property" in one or two other posts discussing similar series, and also someone pointed out that their title is actually quite funny if you think about it. But I should warn you that that perhaps unintentional piece of passive-aggressiveness might well be the highlight of The Famous Five and You.

Give Yourself An Incredibly Unsatisfying Role-Playing Experience

Give Yourself Goosebumps saw R. L. Stine's best-selling series collide with the solo gamebook format in a way remarkably similar to the other big proponent of US interactive fiction, Choose Your Own Adventure, for a total of exactly fifty different books (42 in the regular series, plus 8 'special editions') released between 1995 and 2000, when the franchise entered a hiatus that would last some eight years. With the nineties not being enormously kind to the gamebook genre on the whole, for many members of the generation who grew up with Goosebumps this was likely the first, and quite possibly only, series of interactive fiction books they followed.

If you were of that generation and revisited the original series of Goosebumps books more recently (and for whatever reason a hell of a lot of them have turned up in my local charity shops and second-hand bookshops lately), then they almost certainly read very differently as an adult. Whilst exactly how much of the main range Stine wrote himself still seems up for discussion, the various spin-off series -- this and the short story collections, amongst others -- are beyond debate, with multiple authors having openly stated they ghostwrote various entries. And time may well have been even less kind to the offshoots.

Alea Jacta Est!

Translating into English as "the die is cast", if you didn't know, Alea jacta est! was a four-volume series of adventure gamebooks starring the famous indomitable Gauls published in France in 1988, with three of the entries being translated into English a year or two down the line; the original Latin title remains on the cover, but each book is also billed under the rather less imaginative heading of "An Asterix Game Book". The books boasted a full combat and inventory system, and directly mashed together the appearance of a regular Asterix comic album with the functionality of an adventure gamebook, using a mixture of text sections and puzzles based around illustrations. The English translations were done by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge, who so brilliantly translated the original comics, which gives these versions a great sense of authenticity. And the series might very well be one of the most successful marriages of an existing property to the adventure gamebook format. But given such a category also includes Give Yourself Goosebumps, The Famous Five and You and Dick Tracy: A Catch-a-Crook Adventure, that doesn't seem like a terribly high bar to clear. So, what's it like?

Lord Fear's Domain

Over five years ago, this post detailing everything you could possibly want to know about Knightmare tie-in adventure gamebooks was published to the blog. But as mentioned, there was one omission -- the seventh and final Knightmare book, Lord Fear's Domain, which was left out because a) it was not a gamebook, but a straightforward puzzle book, and b) presumably due to reasons of a short print run, it went for silly money online at the time and I couldn't really justify shelling out for a copy, especially when it wasn't a proper gamebook. (A few reasonably priced copies have shown up on Amazon more recently, which is going to be helpful for reasons that will become apparent.)

Imagine my delight, then, when on the date this post was originally published, I was in a charity shop and found, amidst a pile of obscure titles by well-known children's authors, a copy of the 'missing' Knightmare book in question. We are sticklers for thoroughness here at Ludicrously Niche, so here is an addendum to that original post covering Lord Fear's Domain.

Poskitt's Puzzles

Last year, I looked back at the Killer Puzzles -- a series of notoriously difficult puzzle books from the 1990s. If you haven't read said look back, then for goodness' sake go and do so now, or this post will be even more inexplicable than it already is.

The Phantom of Ghastly Castle and Other Killer Puzzles

The Killer Puzzles series was authored by Kjartan Poskitt, and spanned four titles released in the mid-to-late nineties. They diverged from the Usborne Puzzle Adventures and other series of around the same time in several aspects: apart from a rather twisted sense of humour, they were also extremely difficult, to the point that Poskitt received almost as much correspondence asking for help from adult readers as he did from children - because the series also did not include any answers or solutions.

Killer Puzzles also had one other selling point: if you managed to complete every puzzle in the book, then you could solve its big secret. In three of the four entries (to wit: Decode the Deadliest Joke in the Universe, Titus O'Skinty's Gruesome Gameshow and Attack of the Killer Puzzles), this was a coded message of some kind, although the specifics as to how you decoded it and how the puzzles gave you the key were very different in each book. The other book, Find the Phantom of Ghastly Castle, took a totally different approach: for one thing, it wasn't just a puzzle book, it was a sort of adventure gamebook.

And "sort of" has always been good enough for this blog.

The War Games

A comparison between Crasha Gnasha's computer game and real life versions which does not bode well.

There can have been few things more inevitable at the turn of the century than a computer game based on a hugely popular television programme about members of the public building robots and making them fight each other. In fact, no fewer than five games based on Robot Wars were released, the first popping up just in time for Christmas 2000, and the last in late 2002, shortly before the final BBC series was broadcast.

The first game, Robot Wars: Metal Mayhem, was released for the Game Boy Color. The idea that you could hope to recreate the show with any great degree of accuracy on such a platform could charitably be described as ambitious. But surely what entailed could still have been better than this. I have made several attempts to write this article before now, and each time I have stopped because I find it hard to find anything that sums up Metal Mayhem better than just linking to a YouTube video of someone attempting to play it. But let's have a go anyway.

The Mystery Squad and the Mysteries of the Mystery Squad

The Mystery Squad is an interesting little series of semi-adventure gamebooks, published between 1984 and 1986. I say "semi-adventure gamebooks" because the only form of interactivity is trying to solve puzzles based on illustrations; they're halfway between a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and, I suppose, an Usborne Puzzle Adventure such as Murder on the Midnight Plane.

Simpson Mania

This is another interesting curio for any collector, released in October 1990 by Consumer Guide at the beginning of the second season of "TV's First Family". The version pictured above is the same as my copy, including the wire-bound spine - there was also a conventionally bound edition at some point, and I can also see evidence of an alternative cover, but I believe this one is the original, and its cover most notably contains the startling revelation that Bartman was appearing on merchandise several months before his first (and, for many years, only) television appearance in "Three Men and a Comic Book". Is the actual book itself as interesting?

Dicing with Dragons

When Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were first commissioned by Puffin Books in the early 1980s, it was with the intent that they would write an introductory guide to role-playing games. They got a short way into the writing process before deciding that they'd rather write their own solo fantasy adventure, which became The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. However, Livingstone did still end up writing the originally promised guide, albeit for a different publisher; this was Dicing with Dragons, published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1982, the same year as Warlock.

Alex Rider: "Secret Weapon" Review

Some eighteen and a half years since he first burst into the world of young adult novels, and eight years and three books after author Anthony Horowitz categorically declared he was done with the series and there definitely wouldn't be any more, teenage superspy Alex Rider is still going strong, with Secret Weapon the twelfth and latest instalment in the series. What we have here is a slightly different proposition to the norm - a collection of short stories, some of which have been previously published in newspapers or online, and some of which are completely new for this anthology. This release is more significant than it first appears - it was working on this collection that convinced Horowitz he might have been too hasty in ending the series with Scorpia Rising in 2011 and resulted in its revival two years ago with Never Say Die, with at least two more full-length novels to come before the series really is over for good (the first of which, Nightshade, will be out early next year). But how do the seven bite-sized instalments contained in Secret Weapon measure up?

Thrave Review

It's the late eighties and early-to-mid nineties, and adventure gamebooks are huge in the United Kingdom, with the popularity of Fighting Fantasy having prompted every other publisher going to jump on the bandwagon. One of the more prolific gamebook authors who never wrote for FF is one Stephen Thraves, and I am truly grateful for his name providing the pun in the title of this article. But what about his gamebooks?

Starlight Adventures

It's the mid-1980s, adventure gamebooks are at the height of their fame, and the place to go to get the original and the best is Puffin Books, the publishers of Fighting Fantasy.

Such was the concept's popularity that Puffin also published some rather curious offshoots: series that were not part of Fighting Fantasy, but looked a bit like them. They all had the 'ADVENTURE GAMEBOOKS' banner (sometimes referred to as the "sawtooth" design), the same basic cover design, and they all looked pretty similar internally... but they weren't actually part of the Fighting Fantasy banner. One of these was the Cretan Chronicles, which I have expressed my distaste for in an earlier article. Another was the Starlight Adventures - a series of gamebooks aimed at girls.

Doctor Who: "Twice Upon a Time" Review

NEVER FORGET

Much like the episode that preceded it six months ago, "Twice Upon a Time" is a deeply mixed bag, and in that sense representative of the era it marks an end of. When it's on form, it belongs in the same category as the portrayal of Vincent van Gogh's battle with mental illness. When it isn't, it ranks alongside the revelation that Davros had eyes all along.

Life is Rough When You Lose Your License

Between 1992 and 2001, the American video game developers Humongous Entertainment cornered the market in point-and-click 'edutainment' computer games aimed at small children. They gave the world Freddi Fish, Spy Fox, Putt-Putt and Pajama Sam, selling over 15 million copies of the games. The games released in the company's heyday have proved so enduring that they're still finding a new audience today, having been re-released on Steam.

In 2001, Humongous' owner ended up in financial straits, and over 40% of its staff were laid off, and the company was sold. The new owners tried their hand at releasing one more game, Pajama Sam 4: Life is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff, which came out in 2003, around two years after the previous Humongous game was released. It does not have a very good reputation.

(Sidenote: There was another game released post-takeover as well which also went down badly, but Life is Rough... came to be seen as emblematic of what went wrong with the takeover, which is why it's better-known in Humongous fan circles. No more point-and-click games were released afterwards, but the company did continue with its Backyard Sports series of sports-simulator games.)

Some of the reasons for why it's so badly remembered are the natural and unavoidable results of the gap in production and change in staff: Sam's new voice actor didn't go down well, for example. They try, actually quite valiantly, to retain the way the previous games looked, but it seems some new graphics engine was being used that stops that from being entirely successful. However, there are other factors at play... ones that definitely were under the makers' control.

Prince of Shadows

Gary Chalk collaborated with Joe Dever on the first eight titles in the Lone Wolf series, but then the partnership broke up. One of the results of this was Chalk's next project, the short-lived Prince of Shadows gamebook series, which lasted for just two titles released in 1988 and 1989, “Mean Streets” and “Creatures from the Depths”. Beyond having the same illustrator, the two books have a rather similar feel in their premise, worldbuilding and rules… in fact, you have to wonder if Dever wasn’t tempted to call his lawyer at any point. One way in which these books were very different, however, was their size and internal format. Permit me to demonstrate the former point:

So, what are they like inside? Ask that question not a moment longer, as here’s a blog post that’s going to tell you all about them.

Doctor Who: "The Doctor Falls" Review

“The Doctor Falls” is Peter Capaldi’s third and final series finale, and Steven Moffat’s sixth and also final, although there’s still Christmas to go. Perhaps appropriately, this episode sums up how I feel about their tenures as a whole. The best of it belongs with Vincent van Gogh’s battle with mental illness, whilst the worst of it belongs with the revelation that Davros actually had eyes all along.

Doctor Who: "World Enough and Time" Review

The ever-traditional two-part Doctor Who finale gets underway with a pre-titles sequence where the Doctor stumbles out of the TARDIS, lost in an icy desert, seemingly about to regenerate. Whilst it’s undoubtedly a striking image, it leaves me worried we’re going to get our least favourite type of Steven Moffat: the “deliberately pitching the entire thing to a tiny section of the audience” Moffat. That doesn’t really tend to work out well. But what of the episode itself?

Doctor Who: "The Eaters of Light" Review

“The Eaters of Light” marks an interesting milestone for Doctor Who: the first time the revived series has used a writer from the classic series. Rona Munro contributed the final serial of the original run, Survival, a story often held up as being a template for Russell T Davies’ revival. (NB: Wikipedia goes by the rules that serials should be in italics, but single episodes should be in quote marks. There’s a bit of trivia for you.)